THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 427 



Thus, as a discipline, study of the Science of Life is essential ; part- 

 ly as familiarizing the mind with the cardinal ideas of continuity, com- 

 plexity, and contingency, of causation in clearer and more various ways 

 than do the other Concrete Sciences, and partly as familiarizing the 

 mind with the cardinal idea of fructifying causation, which the other 

 Concrete Sciences do not present at all. Not that, pursued exclusive- 

 ly, the Organic Sciences will yield these conceptions in clear forms : 

 there requires a familiarity with the Abstract-Concrete Sciences to 

 give the requisite grasp of simple causation. Studied by themselves 

 the Organic Sciences tend rather to make the ideas of causation cloudy ; 

 for the reason that the entanglement of the factors and the contingency 

 of the results is so great that definite relations of antecedents and con- 

 sequents cannot be established: the two are not presented in such 

 connections as to make the conception of causal action, qualitative and 

 quantitative, sufficiently distinct. There requires, first, the discipline 

 yielded by Physics and Chemistry, to make definite the ideas of forces 

 and actions as necessarily related in their kinds and amounts ; and 

 then the study of organic phenomena may be carried on with a clear 

 consciousness that while the processes of causation are so involved as 

 often to be inexplicable, yet there is causation, no less necessary and 

 no less exact than causation of simpler kinds. 



And now to apply these considerations on mental discipline to our 

 immediate topic. For the effectual study of Sociology there needs a 

 habit of thought genei'ated by the studies of all these sciences ; since, 

 as already said, social phenomena involve phenomena of every order. 



That there are necessities of relation such as those with which the 

 Abstract Sciences deal, cannot be denied, when it is seen that societies 

 present facts of number and quantity. That the actions of men in 

 society, in all their movements and productive processes, must con- 

 form to the laws of the physical forces, is also indisputable. And 

 that every thing thought and felt and done in the course of social 

 life is thought and felt and done in harmony with the laws of indi- 

 vidual life, is also a truth almost a truism, indeed ; though one of 

 which few seem conscious. 



Culture of the sciences in general, then, is needful ; and, above all, 

 culture of the Science of Life. This is more especially requisite, how- 

 ever, because the conceptions of continuity, complexity, and contin- 

 gency, of causation, as well as the conception of fructifying causation, 

 are conceptions common to it and to the Science of Society. It affords 

 a specially-fit discipline, for the reason that it alone among the sciences 

 produces familiarity with these cardinal ideas presents the data for 

 them in forms easily grasped, and so prepares the mind for recogniz- 

 ing the data for them in the Social Science, where they are less easily 

 grasped, though no less constantly presented. 



The supreme importance of this last kind of culture, however, is 



